Help our family to create a sustainable lifestyle in the Blueridge Mountains, Catawba, Virginia, USA

Detalles

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  Descripción

  Our homestead is a ten acre paradise located in Catawba, VA. Our specific location is Craig Valley in the Washington and Jefferson National Forest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We are new to the area and the property (moved from Pennsylvania on 3/18/2021) and we wish to build and grow a sustainable lifestyle here with expansive fully organic gardening, self sustained water supply and electricity. Currently we grow hay for our neighbor's 80+ cattle and they maintain the field. Soon, we will begin designing and installing a solar power array in 2023. On our property, we have a 300 meter long brook with multiple small waterfalls (1 meter high), and the brook drains into Craig's Creek which is larger and has trout in it and many other small fish, turtles, frogs and other animals. We have a LOT of wild animals in our area such as deer, turkey, hawks, bald eagles, lynx, coyote, and even black bears. The famous interstate Appalachian Trail (AT) is 1 mile behind our home, on Brush Mountain. The most photographed site on the AT (McAfee Knob) is also close by and also Dragons Tooth trailhead and Cascade Falls. If you like hiking and great weather and the outdoors, and creating and living a sustainable lifestyle, consider our location a perfect spot for you! If you are creative and artistic and want to paint some murals on our barn, we'd love that! If you enjoy organic gardening, we have this are expanding it.
  
  About us: Steve holds the position of Associate Director of Climate Action, Sustainability and Energy and Campus Energy Manager at Virginia Tech (University) located 25 minutes away. There, he directs activities that lead to 2030 carbon neutrality for the university's Climate Action Commitment. Christen is a homemaker and essentially sustains the property and would be forever grateful for your help to make our homestead a more sustainable property. Our son, Andrew, graduated university with a bachelors degree in communications in 2022 and is now working at Virginia Tech School of Architecture and living nearby in Blacksburg (the workawayers enjoy him!). Daniel (3rd year university student obtaining a bachelors degree of Nursing -RN), is away at university and has intermittent involvement with the property given school is a 6 hour drive from home. We are a close knit, loving family with full respect for life, inclusiveness and difference and can foresee a great relationship in the making here with workawayers! Andrew created a quick Youtube video about us and workwawayers that have enjoyed staying with us (video not posted yet).

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  Tipos de ayuda y oportunidades de aprendizaje

  Proyectos artísticos

  Práctica de idiomas

  Ayuda en proyectos ecológicos

  Jardinería

  Construcción y bricolaje

  Cuidado de animales

  Ayuda en una granja

  Cocinar para toda la familia

  Ayuda doméstica

  Mantenimiento general
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  Objetivos de sostenibilidad de las NU que intenta conseguir este anfitrión

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  ¿Que es esto?
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  Intercambio cultural y oportunidades de aprendizaje

  Coming from outside of the United States, you would absolutely become very accustomed to the American way of life experienced through seasons, holidays, etcetera and also the local culture of southwest Virginia and the Blue Ridge Mountains. It's a farming culture here so you'd see how locals manage that lifestyle. If you are religious, you likely could share that with others in the region, our family included. Virginia Tech and the Blacksburg Community is an excellent local resource for everyone especially young Workawayers! We would provide you access to those attractive resources as well (Steve works there). You'd have the opportunity to learn about clean, renewable electricity and much more around sustainability.

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  Ayuda

  If you've got some gardening experience and most importantly, you enjoy gardening and being outdoors, then this could be good for you. If you want to learn how to operate the farm tractor, we have that. If you want to learn how to design and actually install a solar array, we need you! If you have previous experience with solar, even better, but not required. We have begun composting better so any support improving that would be beneficial. We have a barn that we are considering doing some updates to, especially if you are creative and want to paint some murals onto it, that would be very cool, we'll supply you the materials. For the right person, we are flexible and if there are other ideas or initiatives while here that you would like to pursue, we can certainly consider those.

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  Idiomas

  Idiomas hablados
  Inglés: Fluido
  Francés: Principiante

  Este anfitrión ofrece intercambio de idiomas
  Este anfitrión ha indicado que está interesado en compartir su idioma o aprender otro.
  Ponte en contacto con él para obtener más información.
  
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  Alojamiento

  You would have your own bedroom, fully furnished, heated and airconditioned. You would have your own bathroom. We have laundry here for you to use. We live in a very nice 2300 square foot brick ranch house. There's always plenty of food and snacks and ice cream, things like that in the house. We keep a lot of fruit around and we grill a lot of vegetables on the grill. We do eat meat but not lots of it. We'll feed you well, as if you were part of our family. Also, we have the most loving and fun pets, a rescue dog, three cats and a crested gecko (hopefully that okay with you).

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  Algo más...

  Again, Virginia Tech and Blacksburg is a big draw for some people, the AT is a big draw for hiking, there are lots of hiking and fishing opportunities (we have the fishing gear), there are state parks nearby, the bus station in Blacksburg will take you to Washington D.C. or New York so you could travel there for the weekend, for example, or maybe we will show you around there. We have bikes that you can use. We go into Blacksburg almost daily and even Roanoke, so we can transport you as needed.
  
  You:
  the right person for us is someone who is humble, who is kind and loving, who is eager to learn and create and manage a sustainable lifestyle. Ideally, you would be interested in learning about our culture (and us learning yours!). We expect you to be open and honest and communicate very well. We like to stay fairly well organized and clean up after ourselves. When and what we work on each week can be flexible. Some weeks there won't be as much to do so you'll have more free time (no pressure from us).

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  Un poco más de información

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    Acceso a Internet

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    Acceso a Internet limitado

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    Tenemos animales

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    Somos fumadores

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    Puede alojar familias

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  ¿Cuántos voluntarios puedes hospedar?

  Uno

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  Horas esperadas

  Maximum 4-5 hours a day, maximum 5 days a week. We are flexible.

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